Background Myocardial ischaemic burden assessed by myocardial perfusion scintigraphy (MPS) is commonly used to riskstratify patients with suspected coronary artery disease (CAD). Accurate estimation of ischaemic burden by CMR with two-dimensional imaging is limited by incomplete myocardial coverage to a small number (usually three) of non-contiguous sections. The aim of this study was to compar...

Elective percutaneous coronary intervention fulfils many of the criteria needed of a clinical model of ischaemic preconditioning. But is this really a reflection of the laboratory phenomenon of ischaemic preconditioning?

The prevalence of ischaemic heart disease was determined by an administered questionnaire and electrocardiography in 7735 men aged 40-59 years drawn at random from general practices in 24 British towns. Overall, one quarter of these men had some evidence of ischaemic heart disease on questionnaire or electrocardiogram or both. On questionnaire, 14% of men had possible myocardial infarction or a...

BACKGROUND Little is known about the relationship between age at menarche and total mortality and mortality from ischaemic heart disease and stroke. METHODS A cohort study of 19 462 Californian Seventh-Day Adventist women followed-up from 1976 to 1988. A total of 3313 deaths occurred during follow-up, of which 809 were due to ischaemic heart disease and 378 due to stroke. RESULTS An early m...

OBJECTIVE Severe impairment of left ventricular (LV) contraction is associated with an adverse prognosis in patients with ischaemic heart disease. Revascularisation may improve the impaired LV contraction if hibernating myocardium is present. The proportion of patients likely to benefit from this intervention is unknown. Therefore, the prevalence of hibernating myocardium in patients with ischa...

OBJECTIVE To determine the factors influencing survival among patients admitted to Western Australian hospitals for the first time with stroke or transient ischaemic attack (TIA). DESIGN, SETTING AND PATIENTS Linked hospitalisation and death records of 7784 patients admitted to hospital for first-ever stroke or TIA between July 1995 and December 1998 were retrieved retrospectively to determin...

AIM We investigated the role of renal sympathetic innervation in the deterioration of renal haemodynamic and excretory functions during the early post-ischaemic phase of renal ischaemia/reperfusion injury. METHODS Anaesthetised male Sprague-Dawley rats were subjected to unilateral renal ischaemia by clamping the left renal artery for 30 min followed by reperfusion. Following acute renal dener...

OBJECTIVES To identify patients with ischaemic heart disease by using a practice computer and to estimate the work required to do so. DESIGN Cross sectional study. Data from the notes and from the computer records of 1680 patients were used to build a database. This was used to compare different methods of identifying patients with ischaemic heart disease. SETTING 11 general practices in th...

BACKGROUND Apart from its well-known stimulation of erythropoiesis, erythropoietin (EPO) exhibits angiogenic and anti-apoptotic effects. These cellular protective effects have also been described in experimental acute myocardial infarction models. We investigated the effects of EPO in a porcine model of chronic progressive myocardial ischaemia. METHODS At weeks 2 and 6 after implantation of a...

OBJECTIVES Left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) has been reported to produce differential electrophysiological effects in isolated epicardial and endocardial cells. This study aimed to examine regional electrophysiological effects of LVH in normal and ischaemic conditions in the whole heart. METHODS LVH was secondary to perinephritis-induced hypertension. Monophasic action potential duration (M...